WHITECHAPEL is the community system bolted on to the side of FREAKANGELS, a webcomic by myself and Paul Duffield that launches next February. As detailed elsewhere, we're opening the system today (Nov 28 2007) as a warm-up for the comic. And for the hell of it.

I'm Warren Ellis. This place was bought for me by Avatar Press, and built for me by Ariana Osborne in concert with Avatar's mechanic Mark Seifert. It's me and Ariana you'll be seeing most of -- me as the operator, and Ariana as chief mechanic.

My website, warrenellis.com, is where I work and speak. But Whitechapel is now where I live. If the place looks a bit weird, especially in comparison to my previous online communities, it's because I wanted this one to reflect my interests, rather than just force you to buy stuff or attempt to take over your mind. Frankly, mind control is easy. It's having to look at all that weird crap in your head that's hard.

Everything you see here is liquid. Anything that doesn't work will be taken away, and new things will be added as and when I feel like it. Today may in fact be a bit rocky, as I've never tested this forum software or Avatar's hosting service under a heavy load. Things might catch fire. But it's a fairly quiet part of the year, so I'm hoping we'll just get a nice roadtest of the functionality.

Ariana -- Wait, wait... I thought the plan was we share the glory, Warren gets the blame?

In any case, I wanted to make sure that people knew that you are the architect of the site's beautiful form and function, and that my contribution was mostly limited to having the good sense to stay out of your way.